On my second visit to the Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs exhibit at MOMA in 2015, I spent half an hour in the last room, the room with the wall-sized works, the beautiful world Matisse was making with colored paper as his final act.
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At the end of a gallery talk in front of Large Decoration with Masks, the speaker connected the two mask images in the piece to the early emphasis of mask imagery in Matisse and Picasso’s work, and that this is “problematic”. In the context of that room, the comment struck me as unnecessary, as well as inaccurate. Afterwards I asked him why he said it. He gave the explanation I expected, that a current understanding links the appropriation from cultural sources in the “Modern Primitivism” those artists were doing in the 1910s as connected to European colonialism.
I gathered he felt he had to add that comment about the masks, but it wasn’t the social necessity for the statement that bothered me, I understood that, it was my perception of an incorrectness in his description of these mask images.
In this work, these are not really “masks”, these are faces. In modern art, the mask has become a face. In traditional cultural arts, the mask is a disguise and transformation of human identity. In Matisse and modern art, the mask stylization is used to explore/reveal identity in portraiture. In this work, these faces could not be more essentially human. They are the human face boiled down to the simplest form, a set of shapes encircled by a line, just as the flowers are the simplest form of flower shapes. Matisse has gone far beyond the inspirations he found in African mask art.
And to say that the inclusion of two small mask images by an accomplished elder artist nodding back to his inspirations, in this incredible 11′ by 33′ garden of colors, created in a technique Matisse invented, is somehow “appropriation” seemed so unnecessary. Especially in the case of Matisse, whose early mask exploration were just one part of a period of “Radical Invention” (MOMA exhibit 2010, how quickly they forget) as he worked through multiple inspirations to develop them into his original art.
From this experience, and others, I realize that I have an insight into problematic questions about cultural appropriation, and not just in my own problematic career. My work gives me a lens into larger questions. I have been developing stories and performance pieces on such origins, inspirations and appropriations for schools and adult audiences, and this has become my new show: Talking Art
Related articles
- Henri Matisse The Cut-Outs — Transformations Gallery
- Why Body Painting? – 3A: Origins – Why did we start painting ourselves? Ancient bodypainting kit discovered at Blombos Cave (thestorybehindthefaces.com)
- Kumadori – Japanese Kabuki Theatre Makeup (thestorybehindthefaces.com)
Chapter 10 of 
Matisse’s painted portraits also adapt well, as he worked often with flat areas of pure color and precise linework. Strong colors and clean linework make for effective faces.
